Women in Sports Media Are Facing More Abuse Than Ever, and We’ve Had Enough
Women are significantly underrepresented in news and media, and nowhere is that underrepresentation starker than in the realm of sports media. Women have been present in sports journalism in the United States since the 1870s, perhaps beginning when Maria Morgan (often called Middy) walked into the editor-in-chief’s office at The New York Times and asked for a job. As a renowned livestock expert hailing from Cork, Ireland, she spent the next 23 years covering horse races and livestock for the Times. Earning herself the nickname “turfman,” Morgan was later regarded by scholars as “the only member of a newspaper staff who in any way resembled the modern sports editor.” The famous Nellie Bly, pseudonym of Elizabeth Cochrane, wasn’t far behind with her 72-day race around the globe in 1890, becoming one of the most famous female “stunt-journalists” in history.
Well, that’s 150 years of experience! So... where are all the women in sports?
As it turns out, the number of women in the sports media field has been dwindling for years. The 2019 Women’s Media Center report “The Status of Women in Media” revealed that sports news desks were handed their sixth consecutive “F” rating in terms of gender diversity from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. The numbers themselves, pulled from the Institute’s most recent analysis of 75 major news outlets in 2018, are staggering: 90% of sports editors, 83.4% of sports columnists, and 88.5% of sports reporters were men. And these numbers actually reflect an increase of women in sports media—a mere +3.6%, but still—where the most recent tallies of female representation stand at 17.9%.
Society tends to function under the blissful fallacy that mere employment of women (or any other minority group, for that matter) in the field equals visibility, which would, in turn, increase the upward mobility and empowerment of women in said fields. But unfortunately, the reality of the situation is a bit bleaker than that: despite the growing numbers of women in sports media, it remains a male-dominated sphere, often traditionally associated with symptoms of sexism and displays of abuse toward women who dare throw their hat in the ring. In a hyper-polarized technology-driven society, women in sports media are far more susceptible than ever to verbal and sexual abuse, especially online, that is partially responsible for gatekeeping the patriarchal hegemony that has maintained its vice grip on sports media.
I received my first hate email on November 30, 2018, while I was working my first real news internship at the Boston Globe. It opened with, “Why are you even writing about football? Did they hire you to write about football because you have a vagina?” A few sentences disparaging my journalism later, I was left speechless with a heavy gut feeling that I had done something wrong. I had been exposed, like a raw nerve, to the sting of spiteful words from an anonymous source for the first time in my professional career, and it didn’t feel good. As a wide-eyed 20-year-old who had earned her top internship, I was troubled not only by these words but by the way I faltered at them. I knew they were hollow and that messages like this should always be taken with a grain of salt, but there was no denying that it hurt.
Women have been dealing with online harassment since virtually the inception of the internet, so this idea isn’t anything new. But the vitriol, debasement, and vilification of today that women in sports media face each time they log in are unlike similar occupational hazards of the past. Online bullying of women is rampant amongst platforms, Twitter being home to perhaps the most voracious offenders. It’s here where we saw sports analyst Doug Gottlieb publicly criticize and question ESPN’s Maria Taylor on her All-NBA vote—more specifically, why she was given one in the first place. And Taylor, in a wonderful show of rightful pride and sass, was quick to let him know:” Because I PLAYED basketball… I COVER the league. And I DESERVE everything I’ve worked hard for.” Twitter was also the site of another attack on Taylor just a few days earlier when a longtime Chicago sports radio host was fired after sharing a photo of Taylor and degradingly suggesting that her outfit was more appropriate for the Adult Video News awards ceremony than an ESPN telecast.
This especially difficult week for Taylor isn’t much of an aberration. Women in all types of media face these kinds of harassment daily, albeit not often from other high-profile media figures, but from everyday viewers and fans who can post even their most vile insults at one touch of a button. One study of 75 female journalists in various fields across the globe found that 97% had experienced online harassment, typically framed as misogynistic attacks or involved sexual violence.
Women in sports media have it just as bad, if not arguably worse than, women who report on and work with other topics that may not be as male-dominated. A social media campaign called #MoreThanMean, launched in 2016 by an independent sports media organization, raised awareness about the severe online harassment experienced by female sports journalists. The video shows several men reading real tweets sent to two female sports reporters, Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro, all of which include different iterations of abuse including abusive language, violent or derogatory sexual comments, and death threats. The two women sit calmly through the entire video, which concludes with a message: “We wouldn’t say it to their faces. So let’s not type it.” The social media campaign drives home the reality that these women are being harassed and threatened online simply for doing their jobs, regarded as an unwelcome female body invading a male space.
Now four years old, the video was released during what became the beginning of a very polarizing time in our country’s history, a time when being a woman (or a journalist) could designate you as a target. In the years since, social media has grown even more consequential yet reckless in its disregard for human decency, evolving into a place where everything is hyper-polarized and sensationalized, and words can quickly become lethal weapons. And in a lot of cases, a controversial opinion or otherwise hot take isn’t a prerequisite to being harassed online—the very act of even maintaining a career in sports media as a woman is often enough to send some online trolls into a barrage of hateful and demeaning comments.
The day I got my first gender-based hateful email was a sobering one. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry a little, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t question my career choice, and I’d be lying if I said that was the last time I was attacked online for the work I do. But it was the last time I let someone else’s hateful words have that much power over me. In the two years since then, I’ve learned a lot about being a woman, being a journalist, and being a woman in sports, all of which have further cemented my belief that I am in the right field, doing the right work for the right reasons and I refuse to let anybody deter me from that truth. Being a woman is hard and being a woman in sports media well within view of the public is even harder, but we’ve been doing it for 130 years and we do it damn well. As Taylor said, we deserve to be here, we’ve earned it, and there is no reason that we should tolerate anyone trying to tell us or anyone else otherwise. It’s time that women and their supporters, fans, and colleagues speak out against the rampant sexism, misogyny, and threats of violence that are so commonly seen and spread online, because “don’t feed the trolls” is outdated—in this decade, we’re tackling them head-on.